Gaining confidence in the kitchen, one messy pan at a time

Chocolate Pudding????

Last night a friend of mine sent a recipe to me. It sounded delicious and I just so happened to have all of the ingredients in my kitchen. I also just happened to have bought a hand mixer so I thought this would be the perfect recipe to try out with my new kitchen appliance!

The recipe was for chocolate pudding made out of avocados, cocoa powder, coconut milk, coconut oil, vanilla, and honey. Simple enough. Sounds like a great combination of ingredients. What could go wrong?

Well, first, I had to prepare the avocados by cutting them in half and cutting it into small enough pieces that the hand mixer could do its job. Then I measured all of the other ingredients, and put them into bowl for easy pouring. It was messy preparing the avocado, but isn’t is usually? I figured it could only get less messy from here because I had already put all of the other ingredients into a bowl, except for the cocoa since I was going to add that last.

First, I added the avocado to the bowl and started mixing the pieces to a smooth consistency. I thought the hand mixer was kinda slow, but maybe it’s supposed to be? I dunno. I’ve never used one of those things before.

Then I added the coconut milk, coconut oil, vanilla, and honey. The hand mixer sounded a bit strained so I gave it a break to cool off then started it again. I did what the instructions said to do by mixing along the edge and holding it at an angle (yada, yada, yada). I decided to add the cocoa at this point because I didn’t want to put all of this effort into mixing the ingredients together then having to do it AGAIN after adding the cocoa. This mixer was taking a very long time to do its job so I wanted to be conscientious of my time.

That’s when the plumes of cocoa powder began billowing out of the bowl. Every time I brought the hand mixer up to go back into the bowl, a cloud of cocoa came spilling out. I even turned off the mixer and tried to bury the cocoa with the already mixed ingredients. It seemed to be working, except apparently, I hadn’t screwed the blender part of the hand mixer into the motor part all of the way so it came undone. At this point my hands were so messy with the chocolaty concoction that I couldn’t get a grip on the mixer to twist the blender tight enough. I grabbed some paper towels to clean my hands and tried again. It still didn’t work. Ok, I thought, “I’ll wash my hands”, but I was in a hurry so I didn’t dry them all the way, and my hands just kept slipping. Then I thought, “Let me do this correctly and dry my hands appropriately…. Dammit, now the blender is slippery. Ok, let me get some paper towels and clean that off.” Well, that didn’t work…So I thought “I guess I’m just not strong enough. I need to get a better grip”, but it still didn’t screw on all of the way. Finally, I got so pissed off at this hand mixer that I just He-manned it on and finally it was secure. Keep in mind, that each time I thought I had it screwed on adequately, it was not and just kept popping off while I was mixing. So frustrating.

Back to the pudding….

The following are the thoughts I had while making this “pudding massacre”, as my friend put it, once I showed her the above picture:

She comes in and tries it. She had all of the excitement of Christmas in her eyes….then the supreme let down that is the reality of this pudding not at all tasting like chocolate pudding. She was so kind about it and said:

“It sort of tastes like chocolate pudding but mainly tastes like dark avocados….”

Back to the drawing board…

I added more vanilla and more honey. I had her try it again. She said it was better. So I added more vanilla and more honey again…Keep in mind about 10 minutes have passed by. This mixer is just taking for.ev.er. to mix the ingredients together.

Me: “P! Try it again!”.

P: “Yes, this tastes way more like chocolate pudding!”.

I’m just so excited. I have all of the excitement of Christmas in my eyes. Then I ask:

“Would you eat it for dessert at lunch?!”….to which she responds:

“Ummm….no”.

*sigh*

I guess I’ll clean up now.

Lesson Learned: Just because you have the ingredients in your kitchen, doesn’t mean that the recipe is going to be successful.

Positive Lesson Learned: While I was cleaning up, I noticed that the hand mixer has two speeds. TWO. I was on the slowest of the two speeds….